Memorable, edge-of-the-seat stuff

Rating: 8/10 (2 June 2003)

I bought this movie a couple of weeks ago on DVD. Last night I sat down to watch it and it blew me away. One of the best sci-fi / horror movies I've ever seen, and when set alongside more than a few so-called Hollywood blockbusters, provides ample proof that `bigger' isn't necessarily `better'. A lot of other pundits on this page have pointed out the obvious parallels with other post-apocalyptic and `zombie' movies, but so far no-one has mentioned the superb and unfortunately rarely-shown, never-released-on-video 1970 film `No Blade Of Grass' which also depicts a `post-apocalyptic' Britain. Anyone who's seen that movie will know what I'm talking about.
One thing that I liked about `28 Days Later' were the haunting scenes of a dead London. I love `dead city' scenes in my post-apocalypse movies, it is after all what it's all about! Here, this was apparently achieved by a clever mixture of computer effects wizardry and the good old-fashioned method of literally shutting down sections of the city (and also of the M1 motorway) for short spells at `quiet' periods very early in the morning to allow the requisite footage to be filmed. And the results are stunning. The scene of central character Jim standing on the bridge next to the Houses of Parliament in a completely deserted London is (for me anyway) up there on a par with Chuck Heston coming across the ruins of the Statue of Liberty at the end of the original `Planet Of The Apes' movie. The whole movie had me on the edge of my seat from start to end. The characters are strong, the story moves along at a decent pace and the acting by all those involved is superb. The `Infected' were seriously scary too, although I would have liked to have seen more of them in close-up, rather than so much fast-cut camerawork which unfortunately seems to be all the rage among movie-makers these days and can in some cases be quite headache-inducing. The only (minor) beef that I have with the story is that it was never explained why (apparently) millions died from the virus, yet (apparently) millions of others simply became red-eyed crazies out for blood.
The ending was also nicely up-beat, in contrast to the rest of the film (see the deleted scenes on the DVD extras for the much more down-beat alternative ending!). The vintage Hawker Hunter jet (with indiscernable markings) flying across the Lake District at the end was perhaps the one thing that really did betray the project's modest budget  obviously a state-of-the art RAF Tornado, a USAF F-16 or something similar would have been too expensive, as a result of which the makers had to resort to hiring a museum-piece 1950s fighter jet which resides (in real life) at Blackpool Airport! But that's a very minor quibble about an absolutely superb piece of BRITISH film-making that deserves to go down in history as a classic of its genre. Nine out of Ten!